Yerba Buena Center For the Arts

Specialties

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) presents contemporary art exhibitions & performances, film screenings and free public events that place contemporary art at the heart of community life.

YBCA serves as a catalyst for local artistic activity in the Bay Area, while drawing work from around the world that reflects the profound issues and ideas of our time, expands the boundaries of artistic practice, and celebrates the diversity of human experience and expression.

History

Established in 1986.

Yerba Buena (Clinopodium douglasii) is a sprawling aromatic herb of the western United States. What is now San Francisco was originally named Yerba Buena by its Spanish settlers in the 18^th century because of the abundance of the herb in the area.

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) was developed as the result of years of community input and planning with scores of Northern California artists, as well as cultural, educational and civic leaders. From the ground up, YBCA was designed to embrace and celebrate a diversity of arts, cultures, and audiences. Created on the model of the European Kunsthalles, with no permanent art collection, YBCA bridges the seemingly contradictory worlds of pop culture, contemporary art, and community aesthetics.

Each year over a quarter of a million people attend one of hundreds of YBCA exhibitions, performances, screenings and community enagement programs.

Meet the Manager

Ken F.

Manager

Could this actually be a good time for the arts?

I’m as aware as anyone of the long-​term effects the economic downturn has had on all of our lives. Non-​profits, including YBCA, have been hit particularly hard by the recession. Budget cuts, layoffs, real financial – and human – pain have become part of everyone’s world.

Turns out, there isn’t much we can count on these days – except art.

Art reminds us that what really matters is not the accumulation of «stuff,» but the transformational experiences that can only occur through direct engagement with an extraordinary object, a stunning performance, an inspiring film or an incredible new idea. We know that what makes our lives sing are those intangible, irreplaceable arts experiences that live on in our memories and, in some cases, change us forever. To share those experiences with others elevates our singular encounter to one that resonates within our community, reinforcing, once again, that the power of art rests in its very humanness.